Hotluck Restaurant Vancouver Burnaby

Recently a new Chinese restaurant called Hotluck has opened up in Burnaby, on Kingsway near Metrotown.  I have always liked hot and spicy, so of course I have to go try it! I have always found there are not enough choices for spicy Chinese food near Metrotown, finally now there is one very near my home.

Hotluck's menu is mainly Szechuan style Chinese food, and offer many of the usual Szechuan dishes such as mixed meat and vegetable hot pot, fish with pepper, pork tripe with duck blood curd, chicken hot pot, etc (the names may not sound very good translated into english, but actually they have very poetic names in Chinese). The mixed meat and vegetable hot pot (Hotluck Pot) is not commonly offered in Vancouver Chinese restaurants, so we decided to try it. We also ordered a dish of regular sesonal vegetable with garlic to see how well they can cook a simple household dish.

According to their menu, they cook their Hotluck Pot using secret special sauce. It has three types of meat including chicken wing, garlic sausage and sliced pork.  It also has three types of vegetables, which is different everyday, perhaps to make sure that what they use is seasonal and fresh. Other then the meat Hotluck Pot, they also offer a seafood version.  Using the same secret special sauce, but instead of meat it has prawns, squids, fish etc. Personally I am not so much a seafood person, so we picked the meat Hotluck Pot.

Their speed was pretty good, we got our food soon after we placed the order. The Hotluck pot also tasted quite good, although it doesn't taste very authentically Szechuan.  For example, we ordered it to be extra spicy, but it still didn't taste very spicy. To be fair maybe people in North America don't like to eat too spicy and not everybody can handle real spiciness. All in all, their secret special sauce was quite tasty. There are lots of vegetables, like lotus roots, brocolli. So it feels pretty healthy. However just one Hotluck Pot costs over 20 dollars, so it is not very cheap considering the ingredients shouldn't cost that much.

The vegetable dish was quite well prepared. Most importantly it is not very oily, unlike many other Chinese restaurant where they insist of putting much oil into all dishes. The vegetables are not overcooked, tastes very light, just the way I like it.

Overall, I was satisfied.  The Hotluck Pot tastes quite good, and has meat and vegetable within one dish, so it is convinient and feels healthy. I would return again to try some other dishes.